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23 Mar 2011

THE EDITOR: As the doctors’ issue continues to heat up, what are we to make of the following contradictions which seem to be emerging:

1. That the process was “breached,” according to their spokesperson when it is a well-established procedure in the Public Service for officers to be suspended with pay pending an investigation.

2. That the minister cannot suspend when it is in fact the Board that did.

3. The numerous “red herrings” about the number of C-sections performed by the house officer, of her having acted as registrar, about her sacrifice in volunteering to help in her pregnant condition without a word of acknowledgement of the fact that a “botched” operation had in fact taken place, according to the autopsy.

4. The acknowledgement in two of Sunday’s newspapers by the dismissed CEO that Chrystal’s case is one that the SWRHA would not want to “defend” because of the procedural and other shortcomings of the said operation even as the spokesperson for the doctors vehemently tries to do so.

5. The acknowledgement by a senior officer on TV that the doctors did not want to abandon their patients at the hospital, yet joined in the strike, with the spokesperson for the doctors publicly greeting the leadership of the other group in a show of solidarity.

6. They do not mind the investigation according to the outspoken representative but are unwilling to participate in it although 86 percent of a poll on TV said that they should.

And there are others, but the above are sufficient to demonstrate the kind of illogic that marks the thinking of this group of professionals, who, more than any other group because of their training, should base their pronouncements and actions on a critical evaluation of the facts. But the absence of such is the curse of Third World societies such as ours, even among those who should be exemplars in this respect as with this group, but if not this generation, maybe the next, through an education system that teaches us to make intelligent choices in the things we do or say.